Monday, April 24, 2017

If you believe that today’s college students are hopeless, a
glimmer of light has just appeared in the person of Sophie Mann, a junior at
California’s Scripps College. If you despaired to read the editorial published
by The Wellesley Illiterati you will be pleased to see that Mann can write in
clear, coherent English prose. Will wonders never cease?

In a Wall Street Journal op-ed, Mann reports on a strike
called by her college’s resident advisers. As soon as the RAs announced their
action, student tour guides made a gesture of solidarity. They threated to “trash-talk
their own college” to young people who were touring the college in order to
decide whether or not to attend. It's disloyalty run amok.

Mann cites the tour guide manifesto:

Citing
“intersectionality,” Scripps’s “admissions ambassadors”—the student tour
guides—joined the strike. “In our act of solidarity, the majority of us will
not guide the normal tours beginning Monday, April 17th,” they declared in a
statement. “As an alternative, we will use our tours as a platform to share
with prospective students and families the toxic and frustrating climate that
Scripps has created and perpetuates against marginalized students.”

One suspects that the toxic climate involves classes and tests. Apparently these students do not succeed in that climate... so, instead of working harder, they complain. And they blame it on a lack of free therapy. Surely that will improve their grades.

Mann describes their plight:

Scripps
RAs, most of whom are African-American and Latina, get room and board worth
almost $16,000 a year. They feel their work is worth more. In an April 13 letter to new college president Lara
Tiedens, the RAs declare that they’re on strike to “put pressure on Scripps to
fulfill its obligation to students” and to “demonstrate the extent of the labor
we perform on campus.” That “labor” largely consists of opening dorm doors for
residents who forget keys, asking students to turn down music on weekend
evenings, and so forth.

Now, the good part:

Then
there are the mental-health problems purportedly generated by the “emotional
labor” RAs do. The letter acknowledges that Scripps already subsidizes
students’ visits to private, off-campus therapy. But the school only pays $75 a
session, and even if students can get insurance to cover the rest they must
“front” the cost. “This financial burden,” the letter complains, “should not be
put on any student who seeks to improve their mental health.” Should a college
provide therapy to RAs whom it pays to be the mature authorities in its dorms?

The irony of these “mature authorities” whining about their
need for free therapy did not escape Mann. As it happens, the students already
receive free off-campus therapy. The school pays part of the fee. Insurance
picks up the rest. The problem that has driven these students to the barricades
is: reimbursement. You see, they are required to pay for their therapy up front,
only to be reimbursed by the insurance companies later.

You can cringe at the indignity of it all. Entitled students
are up in arms because they have to advance a payment. They have to wait for reimbursement.
Evidently, they have not mastered deferred gratification.

And why, pray tell, do they think that their problems derive
from not having had enough therapy? Where did they ever get that idea? And
where did they get the idea that they should be given things for free, to the
point of not having to advance any of their own funds? How are they going to
compete in a world where the ability to whine is not considered a job
qualification.

As for the outcome, the college president quickly caved in
to these demands:

Ms.
Tiedens quickly caved in. She promised to pay for students’ private therapy and
to hire a “wellness” administrator.

It sends the wrong message. It allows students to believe
that protesting can be a lucrative occupation. College administrators are doing
these students no favors.

1 comment:

Who can oppose people being well, as in wellness? I wish all these students a speedy recover in therapy. Oh, that's right... recovery/healing isn't the point. (sigh) I hope they eventually become well -- well-exercised in amplifying their victims' emotions. After all, virulent, metastasized rage is the diagnosis, prescription and cure, correct? The theatre of all this campus madness is just so... tantalizing.